THE MALE MID-LIFE CRISIS: SOMETHING IS HAPPENING
We are all familiar with these symptoms, with the ways in which mid-life men change their appearance, their mood, their women, their work, and their way of life. Whether large or small, foolish or brave, these changes tell us that something is happening to the man in his forties.
Something unsettling.
Something we don’t fully understand.
The fact is that nearly all men, extraordinary or ordinary, celebrated or unknown, successful or making-do, experience some depression at mid-life. This is the time when a man begins to realize he is growing older and that someday he will die. Earlier he probably thought about death in abstract terms, but now he is being forced to confront it in a more personal, emotional way.
It hurts, this confrontation.
And it usually causes him to re-examine everything: who he is and the work he’s doing; the people in his life and what they mean to him; his past mistakes, present commitments, and future goals. Dismayed by the collapse of youthful dreams, he feels trapped by his own past choices and the rapid passage of time. But he also feels baffled by this newly urgent need to question everything he had previously taken for granted.
“I really feel ridiculous at forty-two asking myself all the same questions I was asking as a sophomore in college,” lamented one man suffering doubts about both his marriage and his work. “Earlier I knew what I wanted. Everything was focused, like a tunnel, and I could see where I was going and what I wanted at the end. Now that’s all gone. Everything I’ve been doing seems like bullshit, and nothing has any meaning for me right now. I don’t know what the hell I want.”
Worst of all, a man is often convinced that he shouldn’t feel confused or depressed, and that nobody else feels the same way he does. Why does the life he chose himself now seem so confining? Something must be happening to him— but he doesn’t understand what it is.
Thrashing around in the turbulent emotional depths of adulthood, most men now in their forties are terrified by feelings they can’t account for or explain. More accustomed to dealing with problems that can first be defined, and then aggressively tackled and solved, they are likely to reach frantically for some simple solution.
Some try to drown their mysterious inner fears with liquor.
Some anesthetize themselves with tranquilizers, athletics, or frenzied work efforts. And some seek relief in compulsive sex or the comforting arms of young lovers. Others try to dismiss what they can’t fix or flee from by latching onto labels which reassure them that whatever is happening isn’t their fault, isn’t their responsibility, and can be safely ignored.
Unfortunately, we have all complied in this dismissal by supplying and sanctioning a variety of labels ourselves. Although we have long known that something is happening to men around forty, we still don’t really understand it; and we therefore feel disturbed and threatened when the adult men who anchor our society start behaving unpredictably. To ease our discomfort we describe their behavior with denigrating names.
With a condescending shrug we say these men are entering the Foolish Forties or the Dangerous Years. We accuse them of going through a Second Adolescence or a Change of Life. And then, having labeled as sick or silly what we don’t comprehend, we file the phenomena away as just a passing phase.
We are all familiar with men like Harry. We have given his problem many names. But we have not yet taken his predicament very seriously.
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